Original subtitles

Thank you.

Miami was one of those games where you're in it, you feel, this

is not our night.

Whatever could go wrong went wrong that night.

Balls bouncing off helmets, going for touchdowns for them.

There were

guys who were a little frustrated.

I mean, Dipper saw it play a little bit.

Come on, man, do your job. Come on, man, you got to look here. Do something. We

got to get to the quarterback. You got to defend the guy. It just was one of

those nights where you couldn't imagine that we could play that bad.

And those guys really took it to them.

There was no luck. We got our tails kicked that night on national

Hysteria here in the Orange Bowl.

Bears will not go undefeated.

And, of course, Monday night game, no one else was playing.

Everyone around the country and around the world literally watching.

But people don't know that we were going to shoot the video the next day of the

Super Bowl shuffle.

We lose, and we got the video shoot the next day saying that throughout the rest

of the season, we're going to the Super Bowl, and we're going to win.

So we're flying home from Miami, and it's like, what the heck have we

gotten ourselves into?

It's like a nightmare.

What on earth are we doing? How do we get out of this? We're talking about

winning the Super Bowl, and we just got our ass kicked on Monday Night Football.

And everybody's there. The whole crew is there. All the cameras.

The Super Bowl shuffle sign is there.

I mean, everything is laid out.

We got there, looked at each other.

Hey, we got to go to the Super Bowl.

Okay, let's do it. We got to go to the Super Bowl. If we don't go to the Super

Bowl, we're going to be the biggest idiots ever.

We got to win this thing, man.

There it is.

How's that feel?

The hottest video in the Windy City is not by a rock musician.

It's by a bunch of football players. It is known as the Super Bowl Junker.

Okay, so here's the vocal.

I'm Fred Breitberg.

I was the engineer and mix engineer of the Super Bowl Shuffle.

The Super Bowl Shuffle went viral

in an age where there was no viral existence like we know it today and was

played all around the world.

It was a phenomenal entity as well as being a good record.

It was an enjoyable record. It was an entertaining record.

And it was a record that resonated with people.

People ask me, you know, did I ever dream about this? No, you don't dream

stuff up.

It just comes your way.

It was a unique moment in time.

Well, Dick Meyer was the chief creative officer at Jovan Fragrance Manufactures,

and at that time they were very successful with Musk.

He created something called a talking box, which gave you a little bit of

background about the fragrance itself.

So on the back of a box, it was not just what was in it, but a story behind it,

kind of a romantic story.

He was getting ready to retire in 85.

and he wanted to follow his passion, which was music.

At the time that I met him, he had a recording studio that had just been

in his home.

He decided to form a record label, Bread Label Records, and we were doing

videos.

Linda Clifford had a video that they had done for her called The Heat in Me in

the summer of 85, and that's where Dick met Willie Goff.

Well, Willie Galt was a wide receiver that came with all the star appeal.

Willie Galt all the way to the end zone for the touchdown.

Willie Galt wanted to be in the movie. There were just a lot of extra things

that Willie Galt did.

I think Willie's the only player I ever saw, as he was about to go out to

practice where you're putting your helmet on, he would look in the mirror

kind of fix his hair.

I always wanted to try things that I believe I could do because I never

to sit when I'm 60, 70 years old and say, boy, I wish I tried this.

But that's why they're good, because they have free spirit.

And they have fun. I mean, this whole thing is fun to them.

We're going to be here all day, baby!

I like that kind of party.

Well, as that season went on, 1985, and the team stayed undefeated, every

player who had something to do with that started to do commercials or do

promotions. So people saw us off the field, you know, and they saw us without

our helmet on. It's the refrigerator.

I'm close to him in real life.

Fridge was kind of the focal point.

but everybody was really becoming their own superstar.

Even lesser -known players are in demand for handshakes and autographs. It's the

greatest football team history in the city.

They were stars, and it didn't go unnoticed by my husband.

One day I'll never forget, he was in his dressing room, and he came out and he

goes, what do you think of football players doing a rap song and doing a

dance?

And I looked at him, and I remember walking back into his dressing room and

saying, what happened in there?

Where did you get this idea?

And he said, no, I just think it would be a really fun idea for Chicago and

their personalities on their own.

And I just think since rap is kind of coming up and it's really catching on

it's fun, it would be kind of fun to incorporate them.

So I met with him, we had dinner, and at dinner we talked about the Bears, and

we talked about, he said, well, you know, we should do a video, a song with

Bears. So Dick made a list of who he wanted in his video, and he gave it to

Willie. It was the dubious job of me to convince those guys to do a rap song.

It was the seventh week of the season.

When in our Tuesday production meeting, we were informed by Dick that we had a

relationship with the Bears and we're going to do a record with them.

Once he had an idea, Dick was very well known for getting things done right away

because he didn't want to lose the moment.

We knew that we were looking for release at Christmas, and so we all got very

excited and began trying to figure out what to do.

I knew that if anybody could get it done.

that could get it done.

Ultimately, within a couple of days, we realized that on the shelf, we had a

product that we had on relief that would be perfect to repurpose.

It was called the Kingfish Shuffle.

It was about an old TV show called Amos and Andy, where Kingfish was one of the

characters. Kingfish, give Andy back his money.

We are the Kingfish Shuffling Crew, shuffling on down, doing it for you,

And so we got the tape, the 24 -track tape, without any of the vocals, just

the band track.

And the entire record is based off that beat.

Using a drum machine was kind of a brand new concept.

And it's funky.

I mean, it's a danceable, fun record to listen to.

Dick thought it was great.

He brought other people in, and they spent long hours just, you know, kind of

making the words to the music, and then the music to the words.

The chorus lyrics were the same. We Are the Kingfish Shuffling Crew became We

Are the Bear Shuffling Crew.

So we have a good, solid foundation of We Are the Bear Shuffling Crew chorus.

Dick was used to doing commercials for Jovan, and he, I think, used the same

process with the song and the words.

Something catchy, something people would remember.

There were games left to play. And here they are talking about, you know, we're

going to the Super Bowl, and we're going to win the thing, and there are games

left to play.

I know enough about sports and sport karma and momentum to realize that

taking a superstitious chance.

That's why with the shuffle, Dick didn't want other people to invest because he

didn't want them to bet on something that might perhaps not happen.

You know, Chicago is a big city.

It's always had its great beauty.

It is absolutely in love with the Chicago Bears, but it's always had its

problems.

And this was an era when the idea of using music to promote something for

charity, Live Aid, We Are the World, these things that came about in 1985.

With We Are The World, 45 of this nation's top recording artists came

made a song in the hopes that it would make a difference for starving people

throughout the world. It was such a wonderful thing to give back to the

that they wanted to be a part of that.

We wanted to really help people in Chicago, and we thought helping the

families in Chicago would be great. And certainly, when you say something's for

charity, you can quite often get people to do ridiculous things.

The first person I went to was Walter Payton.

I knew if I could get Walter involved, that everyone else would follow, because

Walter was basically the leader of our team.

And he said, oh, this would be great, in his voice. Oh, this would be great.

Good with me, as long as I know that I did the best that I could.

And then the next person I went to was Jim McMahon.

And Jim was crazy. Jim did everything. Jim didn't care.

He goes, yeah, we're just going to do this record, and then all the proceeds

will go and do a good thing for Chicago. So we thought that was a cool thing to

do. So I had those two guys.

And then the guy that I was most concerned about,

Mike Singletary.

The leader of the defense, Samurai.

So I went to Mike Singletary, and he looks at me with those big eyes.

Well, Willie, you know, this is big.

But if all the guys are doing it.

I'll do it.

If it's good for the team, it's good for us all.

And once Willie told me about what it was for, what the money would go towards

feeding the hungry, then he knew that was a buy -in. The guys who outrightly

said, no, I won't do it, was Dan Hampton and Steve McMichael.

Dan and Steve, they're just a little more conservative.

But that was also when, you know, we beat Dallas 44 to nothing.

The Chicago Bears have overwhelmed the Cowboys and put on one of the most

impressive displays that we've seen in a long time.

And when Willie approached me, I thought, hey, how bad can it be?

The recording of the song was way before the video, of course.

Each guy had to go to Dick Myers at his recording studio in his basement to

record their lines on audio track.

So Thursday of that week...

All the players show up.

Dick was totally prepared. He had each one of their lyrics ready for them.

And we put them out in the studio on a mic, and they would recite and sing

parts.

We got the lyrics, and we began to look at them. It was kind of like, okay, this

is interesting.

I know I changed a few. I wanted to change the Punky QB. I still don't know

where they came from.

I'm the Punky QB known as McMahon.

I cut my hair at training camp, and they said I became a punk rocker all of a

sudden because I had a bad haircut.

None of my words, and I even checked, I don't say Super Bowl. I thought it was

called the shuffle.

We're going to do the shuffle, then ring your bell.

And then, you know, you started to realize, oh, my gosh, some of the guys'

lyrics were talking about the Super Bowl.

I just came to do the Super Bowl shuffle.

I'm from Chicago. The idea that during the season you're going to have anything

that's going to be bulletin board material, Super Bowl, are you out of

mind? I wasn't thinking about it when we did the record part.

Nobody's really going to hear it other than people in Chicago probably, right?

So between Saturday and Sunday, we mixed that record and prepared it for

shipment to Capitol Records for mastering.

Bears shut out Dallas last week.

And they're working on a shutout of the Falcons.

Did we have the TV on while we were mixing on Sunday? Absolutely.

12 -0.

Looks like it's going to happen.

Once we all recorded our songs, we set the schedule for game number 13 to do

video, which was our Tuesday after a Monday night game because we had

off. And we're like, what? That wasn't part of the deal. You said we're going

make a record.

Nobody ever mentioned the word video before.

It was always going to be a music video.

It was just done in two parts.

It's like acting.

Musicians seldom actually play or sing.

They use the recording of the song to sync up the action, and then the

soundtrack is added in editing.

With the success of MTV and the proliferation of music videos, it wasn't

just to have a great song.

Now you had to have visuals to accompany this.

It has become real important. It's become the marketing tool. It's the

commercial. It's the promotion for the album.

So we play Miami.

And we lose.

And guys don't want to do the video.

Man, I'm not doing no Super Bowl. Man, forget that. So there's a lot of

on me to go to each guy and say, look, we've got to show up tomorrow.

And as I started that round on the plane, guys were like, man, I don't know

because we lost.

It may be a bad love. We shouldn't do this.

And my heart is going like, oh, my gosh, I'm in trouble.

So I go to Mike Singletary. I said, Mike, look, man, we're committed. I know

just lost, but we're doing a good thing here. I mean, we're going to help

neediest families in Chicago.

We made a commitment to do the Super Bowl shuffle video.

We have to do it.

And he said, you're right.

We committed to it. We said we were going to do it.

And, hey, let's be men.

Suck it up. Let's go.

We committed. We said we were going to do it. Be there.

My name is Mike Fayette.

Camera 4. Is there somebody on Camera 4?

And I was in charge of the video crew.

The director was Dave Thompson.

And I started getting phone calls at around midnight from crew members, and I

tried to reach out to the production team to make sure things were still on,

we really didn't get confirmation that the taping of the Super Bowl shuffle was

going to happen until about 4 in the morning.

I didn't know it at the time, but the Bears were still in the air flying back

from Miami.

So they didn't arrive until about 6 o 'clock, which is when our load -in

Took us about four hours or so to get ready for a 10 a .m. start.

Yeah, out of there.

10 a .m. came, and there were no bears.

10 .30 came, there were no bears.

11 o 'clock came, there were no bears, and the worry began to arise again that

maybe the enthusiasm for dancing and singing after their first loss of the

season just wasn't going to happen.

Luckily, around noon, the bears began to trickle in.

I don't think anybody was in a really good mood.

How did it happen that you volunteered?

I did volunteer. I got suckered in.

How many hours of sleep did you get last night?

Not many.

I think maybe four or five.

I like football playing better, but this is something that helps me out.

It was like 30 guys and 25 or so wound up coming.

There were a number of no -shows, and none were more notable than missing Jim

McMahon and Walter Payton.

It was pretty audacious of us to talk about going to the Super Bowl, winning

you know.

And we still got games to play, and we just lost.

Okay, let's have a rehearsal for words now, okay?

It's one thing hearing something on the radio and seeing a bunch of guys on the

video screen doing what they were doing, so.

Walter and I didn't go. We told them, look, we're not doing it.

Wasn't part of the deal.

So we said, okay, we have to do it without him.

We all held up, all the team, and we talked, and we said, look, guys, what

happened yesterday was bad, and we can't let it happen again. We have to do

things and do it as a team. This is Mike Singletary talking.

He said, we're starting with this. We're going to commit ourselves to doing it

as a team.

Don't lose the game and then come do a sorry video.

You know, don't be a, yeah, I'm Samurai Mike. I'll stop him cold, man. Yeah,

okay, yeah, I got it.

We're here. We're committed to being here.

Let's be professional, and let's get it done.

Now, these are elite athletes, and they can move like nobody's business.

But nobody had ever taught them to move together.

And so one of the funniest parts of the whole production was watching Mike

Singletary, who sort of took the lead on this, trying to get these guys to dance

together. The first thing I just feel is a lot of guys couldn't dance.

People always say, well...

You were at least a better dancer than Steve Fuller, but Steve got hurt in the

fourth quarter and he was on crutches.

And they go, Steve, the crutches really don't work.

You watch him, all you can do is like one leg in, out, in, out.

Yeah, turn.

Yeah, and then take a step, don't just slide.

Leslie was probably one of the worst dancers.

Left. Okay, come on.

Come on, let's go, man. One, two, three, and we are the best.

He is awful.

You're from Mississippi, man. Come on.

Every chorus that starts, I want you to get a little nuttier back here. I mean,

there's no reason why after that first chorus you can't start moving and

and working out a little bit.

Dave was concerned that the Bears would have no enthusiasm for doing this.

And so Dick Meyer became the cheerleader.

Whenever they were dancing on stage, Dick was dancing behind the camera.

The fact that these guys couldn't dance together actually became a post

-production problem because we had to create the illusion that they had some

talent.

And that meant that when you watched the video itself...

You seldom had a take that was more than two seconds long.

Because that's as long as they can keep their hands moving to the left and their

hands moving to the right.

The decision was made to get as many of the wide shots in the can as possible

because we had all the bears there at the beginning and we weren't sure how

they would stick around.

It took about two hours to get all of that wide stuff.

And then a lot of them went home, and we began working one -on -one with the

individual performances.

Many of the Chicago Bears were perfectionists. Some of them weren't.

Mike Singletary, in particular, I think wanted

to do it about 25 times.

It's a little unfortunate, but you got to do it until you get it right. And I

wouldn't want anything out there with my name on it that isn't right.

Singletary was great.

Otis was great.

The one that was absolutely astonishing was the fridge.

The fridge nailed it the first time.

The person

who had the most trouble trimming the part was... Probably Richard Dent.

Because Richard was just very quiet.

The only lyric that we felt that we had to censor was,

I like to knock guys out on their ass.

And rather than beep the ass or use a tone, we decided to put a whistle.

I got a phone call.

So I picked it up and he's like.

I need you to come to the Park West right now because nobody else can fit

the referee costume.

And I said, I have to do what? I'm who?

It took only maybe 17 takes.

Point and blow a whistle.

I think today was an example of a bunch of professionals that became.

professional in an area that they probably weren't as used to as they

are. In just that filming session, we bonded in a way that

we could never have bonded in any other way.

That was the fun part of working together in a totally different realm.

There were guys that were backups, teaching guys.

that were starters, we mixed in a way that we had never had a chance to do

before. And it became a rallying point that brought us together, got us

refocused. This is what we said we were going to do.

Let's go get it done.

We finished shooting at about 10 o 'clock Tuesday night.

During the two first days of editing,

Jim McMahon or Walter Payton would actually participate in the Super Bowl

shuffle?

You know, McMahon got his nickname for a reason. He was the punky QB.

He didn't like people telling him what to do, and he thought he could just not

show up.

And Dick found out where he was and went to speak with him in person.

Dick said, look, this is a group effort. You're part of a team.

And you also signed a contract. You said you were going to do it, and you were

happy to do it. Now all of a sudden you have something else to do.

So Walter and I had to do our parts in the racquetball court at Alice Hall

practice one day.

These are the tools of the future.

And with the process called matting, they were simply added to the rest of

bears with no one knowing the difference.

It was a green, blue, whatever screen it was behind us, and just did whatever

the hell I was doing.

It's very awkward to just pretend like you're with a group of people lip

-syncing to the music.

You're pissed off anyway, having to be there.

I tell them, you better get this in the first take or two, because it's only

going to get worse.

Over the pill.

I can't dance, but I can throw the pill.

I motivate the cats. I like to tease. I play so cool, I aim to please.

That's why you all got here on the double to catch me doing the Super Bowl

This is the kind of stuff that guys do behind closed doors.

But do it.

and put it on tape for everybody else to see. You know, it's kind of unheard of.

Well, you

see

if there's not a really happy camper.

The Super Bowl shuffle kind of crept up on everybody. I think we'd heard that

the Bears had done something.

You hear this rumbling that there's some video or something going to come out.

The Bears are gearing up for the Super Bowl. Not on the football field, but in

the recording studio.

Bear fans, we are ready. We know you're ready. The music was played on the radio

in Chicago, literally that weekend after the Super Bowl shuffle was finished.

It's close to the first half. Get that even.

In the second half, the Bears have absolutely dominated.

And from the instant it hit the air, you could not hear it in this town.

It was playing everywhere.

It was like a wildfire, and they couldn't get enough of it. You could

song anywhere you went.

When the VHS videotaped copies, because there were no DVDs back then, and when

the 45 RPM records came out just before Christmas, they flew off the shelves.

I'll never forget, I was walking downtown, and I had to go to Marshall

for something.

And they had television all over the lobby, and they were all playing the

Bowl shuffle.

It was a big deal everywhere.

Even if it was just to hate the Bears.

Hey, come and look at these idiots.

You've never seen anything like this, honey. You gotta see this.

Everybody's trying to rhyme.

I mean, it was just, it was funny.

I'm not here to feathers ruffle. I just came here to do the Super Bowl shuffle.

And the Bears go home victorious.

The better the Bears did, the more momentum it got.

And so you've got the Super Bowl shuffle playing in stores and people dancing to

it downtown.

And the season's not over.

The Bears even got their own theme song there, the Super Bowl shuffle.

This is on, guys. We talked about this.

Now there's a song about it.

Coaches are going to be letting their players listen to it before the game.

Oh, you know, here's the team you're going to play. They're talking about

to the Super Bowl. That means they've got to beat you.

I was thinking right then, we better win.

Because we're going to look really stupid.

Ali famously said, if you can back it up, it's not bragging.

Well, if you can't back it up, you're going to have to hang your head and stay

out of the public eye because you're not going to be able to lay that down.

That's the real fear.

that you do something like we did and it becomes a parody because you

lose and you spent time and energy and focus on something that wasn't football

related.

The matchup for Super Bowl Sunday set for two weeks from today will be the

powerful Chicago Bears against the New England Patriots. The Bears, the

Patriots, together on MTV.

The Bears will battle the Patriots. In a special edition of the Friday Night

Video Fight, the Super Bowl Shuffle versus New England Patriots are weak.

Have you ever seen the Patriots response video?

Um, no.

Not that I remember.

No, I never saw the Patriots response video.

This is interesting.

I've never seen this.

New England is gonna be number one. New England, the

Patriots.

I think I had enough of that one.

I can't fuck with this man. I'm sorry.

I'll put it this way.

If we're in a situation where we're going to the Super Bowl, we haven't done

video, and another team had done the video, I'm not going to make another

one to try and rival it.

I'm going to go out there and beat the team.

Welcome to Super Sunday. The Bears, as you know, have been America's football

darlings all year.

Logic says they'll be doing the Super Bowl shuffle in Chicago tonight.

Well, I remember watching the Super Bowl, and we just wanted to be quiet in

area where if it didn't work out and they lost, that we could cry in private.

The game opened up, and we had a fumble on the first series.

They scored first.

But then I looked up at the scoreboard, and it was pretty much, you know, the

first team to score had won like, you know, 19 out of 20 Super Bowls. And

like, wow, I felt almost like statistically defeated, even though we

given up a first down.

But that changed pretty quickly, and, well, thank God it did.

In terms of dominant sports performance, there's Secretariat, and there's the 85

Bears, and then there's everybody else.

The Honey Bears are whooping it up with a crowd, and they're doing the Super

Bowl shuffle, and it's just an incredible sight.

It was amazing to actually see it at the Super Bowl.

We had said that this is what's going to happen, and to see that come through.

It just, it was unbelievable.

Will they be doing the Super Bowl shuffle in Chicago tonight?

I'm sure they will. You know, I'm going to be doing a little shuffling myself.

It took some nuggets, but it worked out pretty well.

In Chicago, hundreds of thousands are expected to welcome their team from a

victory that was really more of a waltz than a shuffle.

Well, this record wound up being number 41 on the Pop Billboard chart.

That was amazing when we found out we got a gold record and we were up for a

Grammy.

We thought we'd win. We were cocky.

And I'm excited about going up to accept my Grammy.

And they said Prince.

If you're going to lose a Grammy, you might as well lose to Prince, right?

I've never seen a bunch of guys jump in on a project so enthusiastically in my

life. And I'm pretty excited about the way it turned out.

There are many ways to remember Dick.

He was funny.

He was smart.

He was 6 '7 and could dance beautifully.

And he was an innovator.

He was somebody who felt that just because it's new and hasn't been tried

doesn't mean that it won't succeed.

What would have happened if it didn't come out your way? Well, life is a bunch

of chances. It was a great risk to take.

But we had the skills and the talent and the confidence, and I'm really pleased

we took the risk.

What started as a Super Bowl shuffle has become a championship strut.

We were very fortunate to pull off something that may not ever happen

A team that was crazy enough and wild enough, different enough to pull it off.

And so the message is, every now and then in life,

There are things that come along that's unusual, never been done before,

that when those things happen,

man, take advantage of them.

Enjoy them.

Don't try to rationalize them.

Take it for what it is. Breathe it in because it's only a moment.

That's what the Super Bowl shuffle was.

God damn.

do you